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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

I assume that you haven't heard that immunotherapy is the new big thing in cancer research?

It's how they cured former President Carter:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/arleneweintraub/2015/08/21/jimmy...

Actually, immunotherapy is the new old big thing in cancer research. As I recall it was first hot in the late 70s/early 80s after the invention of hybridomas, but failed to produce dramatic early successes.

I share the parent's skepticism. Fighting cancer is fighting basic biology population dynamics: the population that survives the assault is by definition harder to kill. It's made even harder by the very nature of cancer cells that freed from following the rules: they can relocate at will while simultaneously ignoring the body's zoning board (metastasis), steal nutrients (angiogenesis), dump waste in their backyard (poor lymphatic recruitment) and create an area that is inhospitable to other cells while simultaneously making for difficult drug delivery, ignore court orders to stop what they're doing (evade apoptosis), and replicate faster than other cells in the body (both by producing their own growth signals and ignoring anti-growth signals, including senescence). Also, the cancer cells have a head start. The deck is stacked against "curing" cancer by chemotherapeutics or immunotherapy.

I do cancer research at UCSF on an immunotherapy project...

I'm not one to usually complain about downvotes, but this is ridiculous. The HN hivemind at its most absurd.

This person is literally working in the research sector involved, giving their opinion (it's not a nice opinion, but it is presumably informed), and getting downvoted because the HN crowd doesn't like it.

EDIT: At the time I wrote this comment the parent comment and the root comment were both far into the negatives with downvotes.

Agreed, people seem to be downvoting because they hope he/she's wrong rather than to post a reply explaining their reasoning. I see nothing wrong with the root comment and just upvoted it to give it more attention.

I agree with you that the down voting is silly, as s/he makes some good points, but suspect the down voting was in reaction to the tone of the comment. If one was holding a lab meeting and a comment arose in that tone, one could image other lab member getting defensive. tl;dr The comment would have been more effective without the passion of fail'hard' and other language.

Give it an hour or so. the hivemind is usually strong in the beginning.

Should be

Down votes = troll or argumentative or factually wrong

Actually

Down votes = I disagree

I have quit HN many times over that but there isn't anything that can replace HN right now.

Well, we all know that now but not for the first comment.

I'd certainly be interested in hearing what's effective and what is not. How does your project work, for example? Are you discounting most immunotherapy drugs? Is there anything we should pay particular attention to when reading the mainstream media?

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